<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>The Pit in the Heart of Hope's Peak by PikaFail</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27468595">The Pit in the Heart of Hope's Peak</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/PikaFail/pseuds/PikaFail'>PikaFail</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Bullying, Childhood Trauma, F/M, Hurt/Comfort</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 18:41:15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,531</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27468595</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/PikaFail/pseuds/PikaFail</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Makoto Naegi is the most optimistic and trusting person at Hope's Peak Academy. Kyoko Kirigiri notices something off about him after an accident occurred. What secrets lie within Makoto's childhood? The Ultimate Detective wants to find out.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kirigiri Kyoko &amp; Naegi Makoto, Kirigiri Kyoko/Naegi Makoto</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>68</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Pit in the Heart of Hope's Peak</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hi everyone! I'm back with another fic, this time around the game series Danganronpa! I love this series and their characters, there's a favorite for everyone, and I just so happen to love Makoto Naegi, he's such a goodhearted and lovable boy. This fic takes place and has slight spoilers for the end of Chapter 5/Chapter 6's beginning, though I try and stray away from as many spoilers as possible. I also stray away from the canon of the game a bit, so not everything is exactly how it plays out in the original game. Thank you to all of my friends who supported me in this endeavor! Please enjoy!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Makoto Naegi didn’t know when he blacked out, or how long he blacked out for. The last thing he could remember is almost being executed for a murder he did not commit. If the AI program Alter Ego did not step in when it did, Makoto would have been a pancake. All he knows now is that he’s somewhere he’s never seen before, and that the general smell of this place is week old socks. He tried to move, and immediately pain shot through his head.<em> “Okay,”</em> Makoto thought. <em>“That is not good.”</em> After a while, he got himself up and surveyed his surroundings. There was trash everywhere. Literally, the place was a garbage dump. “So much for being the Ultimate Lucky Student.” Makoto looked around for an exit, and in the distance he saw a door, partly obscured by trash. He dashed over to it, and tried to open it, but it was locked tight. No amount of pulling, pushing, or kicking could open it. “Since that’s a no-go, I should find shelter, it’s cold down here…”</p>
<p>Around a day later, Makoto was getting hungry. He had found an old blanket, and was huddling near the place he had fallen down from, as it was the only reliable source of light in the whole place. Suddenly, a screeching sound was heard from far above Makoto, and tons of garbage bags came falling down. Then, however, something peculiar happened. A grunt was heard from the mass of plastic bags. Fear shot down his spine as his mind gravitated to the worst possible outcome. “M-Monokuma?” Makoto asked as he approached the pile cautiously. Suddenly a head of lavender hair popped out of the trash. “Comparing me to that overstuffed bucket of bolts? Rude.” Out came Kyoko Kirigiri, Ultimate Detective and Makoto’s best friend, and his crush. Over the time they’ve spent in Hope’s Peak Academy, Makoto had gotten the stone-faced, emotion-hiding detective to open up to him, and the two were now very close. He wouldn’t admit it to anyone, but he seriously loved the detective, no matter how unreciprocated those feelings were. “K-Kyoko??” Makoto squeaked, a mix of relief, surprise, and happiness washing over him. He offers her a hand up, which she accepts, grasping his grimy hand in her gloved one. “What are you doing down here?” “I’ll answer questions later, first,” she hands him a bag, “eat up, you must be famished.” Makoto’s eyes lit up as he started to dig in.</p>
<p>“Aaahh, that hit the spot..” sighed Makoto as he finished off the last of his water bottle, “I’m at full power once again!” “Good to see you haven’t given in to despair just yet, your unwavering hope is inspiring from time to time.” Kyoko said as she looked around, trying to find a way out. Makoto was glad she was slightly distracted so she couldn’t see the blush plastered on his face after receiving a compliment like that from her. “Well, it’s hard not to be hopeful when a close friend comes to rescue you. Seriously, thanks. I know you had no choice but to go along with my execution, and it makes me happy to see you come help me..” Makoto noticed that Kyoko probably wasn’t listening, as she was still looking around for an exit. “A-ah, I found a door over there earlier, but it’s locked..” Kyoko looked where Makoto was pointing, and immediately started to walk over. Makoto tailed behind, wondering what she’d do to unlock the door. As far as he remembered, all lock-picking tools were strictly against regulation. Kyoko reached the door and started to study the lock meticulously. “What are you thinking, Kyoko? How should we bust out of here? I think I saw some scrap back ther-” “No need.” Kyoko cut in, stopping his train of thought in its tracks. “Don’t you remember? We have this.” She dangled a key in front of him, and his eyes widened. It was Monokuma’s key! She had stolen it from the bear a while ago to aid in her investigation. He had forgotten all about it in his frenzy of thought. “O-oh, of course, yeah!” She turned back to the door and slotted the key into the lock, and they heard a resounding noise as the door unlocked. They passed through and were met face to face with the longest ladder both of them had ever seen. <em>“It feels like we’re in a stealth game…”</em> Makoto thought, already feeling sore from the amount of climbing they’d have to do. “Right, let’s get moving, it smells like a dump truck in here.” Kyoko said, signalling for Makoto to start climbing first. Makoto froze up for a second, but regardless started to climb. The climb was silent the whole way up.</p>
<p>Later on, once both of them had reached the top and gotten safely back to their dorms after everyone else welcomed Makoto ‘back from the dead’, and Kyoko explained her plan to take down the mastermind of this game, Makoto was lying on his bed, thinking. It was past midnight when he heard a knock at his door. Confused, he got up and opened the door. “K-Kyoko? What are you doing here this late? Is it about the mastermind? Did something happen?” “No.” she replied briskly. “May I come in?” Slightly flustered at this, Makoto looked backwards to quickly check if his room was messy. Makoto always cleaned his room, he hated feeling dirty or having trash around the room. Today, his room was a bit messy, with his most recent clothing on his bedroom floor, and his desk piled up with his other miscellaneous belongings, but it was nothing too bad, so he decided it’d be fine. “Yeah, sure thing.” He stepped aside, allowing Kyoko to come in, then shut the door behind him. She started to look around, making Makoto more and more nervous. <em>“She’s judging my room so harshly right now isn’t she.. I mean I know it’s a bit messy and I’m not the best at interior decoration but I thought that it’d be somewh-”</em> “Makoto.” He was snapped out of his thoughts by Kyoko, who had turned to him once again. “What’s up Kyoko?” He threw on a forced smile to try and look confident. “I actually should be asking you that Makoto. You’ve been acting weird ever since the trash room. Unusually silent, distant, less caring. Looking at your room was the last piece of evidence I needed to know something was up. Your room has always been clean, but taking a look at the clothes thrown on the floor, and your desk being in shambles, I know that something is going on.” <em>“She’s got me pinned to a fault. She really is a great detective…”</em> Makoto considered his options. He could lie to Kyoko, saying that he’s fine, but that’s wrong. She has put her trust in him, just as much as he has put trust into her. To betray her trust was out of the question for him. If he was going to tell anyone about his darker moments, it’d be her. “Alright, if you promise not to laugh.” “Makoto, I never laugh, and you know that.” Her lavender eyes pierced his mind, seeing right through his attempts to prolong the inevitable. “Sigh.. alright then, you may want to get comfortable.”

</p><p>After both of them had sat down, and Makoto ran down to the dining hall to get tea, avoiding Monokuma’s patrol, Makoto sipped his drink, readied his mind, and began. “So, I believe I’ve mentioned my middle school life beforehand a couple of times, specifically about it being not so fun, right?” Kyoko nodded, recalling him talking about it slightly in their free time. “Well, I’ve been slightly understating that a bit. It was a daily hell. I was bullied relentlessly, every day worse than the last. It started off small, a passing comment on how short I was, someone tripping me while walking. Slowly it started to escalate, people started breaking into my locker and stealing things, slapping my lunch tray out of my hands, stuff like that. I tried to keep positive through it all, thinking that maybe if I showed that it wasn’t working, they’d stop.” Makoto’s expression soured as his usual hope-filled eyes slowly lost their luster. “It only made it worse. The things they did before were nothing compared to what they did later on. They started assaulting outside the school grounds, beating me to near-unconsciousness. My parents go outside the country for business often, so they were never home to see how badly I was hurt, and I hid my injuries from my sister to have her not worry. In school it was worse as well, they dumped trash in my locker, on me, and on my food. I could never go to the faculty for help, they’d threaten my sister’s safety if I even attempted. It became a game for them ‘who could cause Makoto the most grief?’, and those who didn’t participate watched."</p>
<p>At this point Makoto was slightly shaking, all emotion drained from his face. “The worst came in the days before graduation. They knew their game was almost over, so in one final act, I was shoved into the back of a garbage truck. I was stuck there for almost two days straight. Luckily someone heard me in there just before graduation, and I was able to attend. And the funny thing is that I thought I was lucky, so very lucky that someone heard me. I never once thought that I was unlucky for the bullying, but instead that I was lucky that it was only as bad as it was, and that it wasn’t worse. Maybe it was a shred of my optimism holding on, but once I got my letter saying that I was chosen out of everyone else to attend Hope’s Peak Academy, as the Ultimate Lucky Student, I thought maybe things would be different. But… even in here I was thrown in the garbage… am I really a piece of trash?” Makoto was shaking heavily, tears streaming down his face. Kyoko was appalled. <em>“How could Makoto be as caring and hopeful as he is after living through that hell for 3 years? How long has he held onto this trauma, how much has he suffered because of it? What am I doing just sitting here? What can I do to help?”</em> Kyoko stood up suddenly, startling Makoto. He looked up at Kyoko, tears still streaming. “A-are you angry at me? I’m sorry, I overshared, I don’t mind if you hate me, anyone would after hearing how pathetic I-“ Again, Makoto was silenced in the middle of his sentence, this time by a sudden embrace. Makoto sharply inhaled, surprised and confused. “It’s okay, I’m here for you. Let it all out, Makoto.” Hearing those words shattered any resemblance of self-restraint left in Makoto’s mind. More tears came flooding as he returned Kyoko’s embrace and pressed his face into her shoulder, shaking immensely, taking shaky breaths as the sobbing continued.</p>
<p>After the shaking and crying eased, Kyoko slowly removed herself from Makoto, and began to speak. “You really are the strongest person I know, what you told me reaffirmed that for me.” Makoto looked up at her, obviously confused. “H-h-how? If anything, y-you should think I’m t-the weakest person in the world..” “No, that’s simply not the case. No one else I know could withstand all that and still be as loving as you. Your hope and determination is such an inspiration to all of us, and that inspiration gets more and more potent everyday, even more so now that I know what you’ve gone through before this point.” Kyoko looked down at her gloved hands and quickly set her mind on what to do. “You remember what I said about my gloves?” Makoto was surprised at such a random question, but nonetheless he did remember. Earlier in her life, Kyoko was hurt immensely by someone close to her, resulting in both her cold personality and her constant use of gloves, only showing what’s underneath to very close people and family. “Yeah, of course, but why do you ask?” Then, Makoto felt a cold sensation on his left hand. He looked down to see a badly burned, but beautifully slender pair of hands encompassing his own. Before he could ask why, Kyoko started to speak yet again. “Makoto Naegi, I know I was talking about everyone before, but I’d like to disclose my personal experience. Before meeting you, I would have never thought of revealing my hands to another human being, much less someone in this school. But you’ve changed me, more than you think. At first, I thought your countless attempts to befriend me were annoying and unnecessary. But you kept going, unperturbed by my cold attitude. You went along with my plans without a second thought, talked without wanting an answer, believed me without a reason to, all the while giving off such a remarkably strong aura of trust. I started unknowingly opening up to you, becoming closer with you, and trusting you back. You, through your unfaltering kindness and love, allowed me to trust someone again. You were willing to die for me, while fully trusting in my judgment. When I saw you at death’s door, I couldn’t bear it. And when Alter Ego saved you, I knew I needed to go down there and save you, partly to atone for my sins,” Kyoko averted eye contact with Makoto before continuing on, ”but there was an alternative reason as well. It was because I wanted to see you again, as soon as possible.” Makoto started to blush furiously at that, before calming himself. <em>“Well, she probably just wanted to make sure her best friend was okay, right?”</em> “I’ve always had a hard time putting my feelings into words. Hearing what you had gone through was the final nail in the coffin for me however. We have both been hurt immensely in the past, and need someone to help us heal.” <em>“What is she saying?”</em> Makoto asked himself, very confused at what she was getting at. “Makoto, you have helped me heal more than anyone else, so allow me to return the favor. Let’s heal each other, together.” She leaned in and kissed Makoto, hammering home her message. Makoto’s brain became static.</p>
<p>After separating, Kyoko laid back on Makoto’s bed and laughed. Not a contained and polite laugh, a real, genuine laugh. “I thought you said you never laugh.” Makoto asked after the heavenly noise lessened. “Well, that was before I met you, and found someone that could bring my laugh out, just with his crooked grin.” Makoto turned tomato red before slamming his head into his bed pillows. He then lifted his head, and turned to her. “I really am the Ultimate Lucky Student, aren’t I? How else would I be able to kiss the most beautiful person in the world?” Now Kyoko blushed, a slight blush, but proof of a successful comeback. They continued to fire compliments back and forth until falling asleep, hands, hearts, and hopes entwined.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>